There are many businesses in which it is conducive to provide goods or services in a remote location such as an automobile, a private residence or any location other than a traditional store or office. A few such businesses include flea markets, landscaping services and home delivery of products such as food or furniture.
Vendors operating at remote locations have long wrestled with the problem of receiving payment for the goods or services they provide. Although providing a variety of payment alternatives can increase the competitiveness of vendors operating at remote locations, such vendors also wish to minimize the risk of fraud.
Typically, vendors concerned over the risk of fraud have required customers to provide payment in cash or by certified check. Payment by credit card at a remote location has historically been refused because the credit-worthiness of the card could not be practically determined.
Therefore, in order to expand the number of payment methods available to vendors at remote locations, attempts have been made to provide practical remote credit card verification. One such attempt is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,446 to Martinez which discloses a method and apparatus for validating credit information during home delivery of an order.
The invention of Martinez provides a home delivery system including a host computer and a portable validation unit. The system permits a vendor to read magnetically stored credit information from a credit card at a remote site using the portable validation unit. The portable validation unit transmits the credit information to the host computer for validation. The host computer determines whether the card is acceptable and transmits the results to the portable validation unit.
A number of remote validation units similar to the unit described by Martinez are commercially available. Such units include the U.S. Wireless Data POS-50 wireless mobile credit card terminal, the PowerTek CMI-3000 cellular data link.
While all of these units provide the capability to validate credit cards at remote locations, these units have significant shortcomings. A first shortcoming is that these units require a cellular telephone line to be dedicated to the remote validation unit. A different cellular telephone line cannot be readily accessed without reprogramming the unit by trained personnel.
A second shortcoming is that these units are not cost effective for the vendor who only occasionally requires remote credit card validation. These units are considerably more expensive than stationary credit card validating devices because they incorporate many different technologies. The only major practical difference, however is their portability.
A third shortcoming is that these devices rely exclusively on cellular technology and are incompatible with other conventional communication schemes. In other words, if a vendor's business changed from remote sales to store sales, new credit card validation equipment would need to be purchased.
Another shortcoming is the power required by such devices. Due to the high power requirements of such devices and the lack of energy saving features, the battery life of the prior art devices remains low. Vendors conducting business for significant durations require a longer battery life than that presently available.
A need therefore exists for an apparatus which addresses the shortcomings of the remote credit validation devices presently known and available. In view of the prior art, there is a need to develop an inexpensive device which does not require a dedicated cellular telephone line.
A need further exists for a device which does not rely exclusively on a particular telecommunication technology. Another need exists for a device which provides credit card validation functionality for a longer duration than presently available.